


Phantom Pain

by newisalwaysbetter



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Caretaking, Christmas Isn't Canon, Cuddling, Emotions, Flynn is a dad, Found Family, Grief, MurderVision, Sickfic, a hilarious tag, fever whump, set shortly post-chinatown so. rufus, set soon post-Chinatown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 18:57:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19774366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newisalwaysbetter/pseuds/newisalwaysbetter
Summary: Jiya, feverish and grief-stricken, has a nightmare and calls out for her father. Flynn knows he's not who she's looking for, but he's the closest thing she's got.(Emotion-heavy murdervision sickfic, featuring Flynn Is A Dad and familial cuddling!)





	Phantom Pain

**Author's Note:**

> Set shortly post-Chinatown, with warnings for lots of grief and death mentions, and brief mentions of gun violence.

There is no word in the English language for a man who has lost a child, but there are words for the feeling of it.

Flynn has heard of phantom pain, when the nerve reaches out for the disembodied limb and finds silence in response. Some nights, he wakes with his daughter’s name on his lips, reaching out, and in the silence it is easy to remember how he lost her before she grew out of being part of him.

This much is nothing new. What _is_ new is Jiya’s face plastered over his daughter’s in his dreams. Or how, upon seeing Jiya charge bravely into danger, _Iris!_ had leapt too easily to his lips.

It’s not so much that Flynn dislikes being paired with her on missions, as it is that each contains at least one occurrence perfectly designed to stop his heart.

Now, they huddle together beneath a thin cover of hay, concealed in the hayloft of an abandoned farmhouse in Belgium, all too near the front of the Great War. Flynn would be more concerned with the explosions in the distance if Jiya weren’t pressing her coughing mouth into her elbow. Below them, Rittenhouse agents ransack the place. Jiya audibly struggles to breathe.

Flynn’s hand is resting on his gun, and his heart thunders. If the broken thing in him was seeking a replacement, it has found one in the worst possible way.

(The first time he saw Jiya, he was not thinking of his daughter. She and Rufus crouched, two potential threats and two potential bodies, at the other end of his gun.

To have accidentally adopted her seems a cruel message, or a brutal cosmic joke.

Listening to Emma stand bare yards below them and order their deaths, Flynn thinks darkly that it wouldn’t be the first time.)

They escape from that scrape, but barely, and Flynn thinks of the first time he almost lost Jiya to history, and feels it like a punch to the chest. There is surprise, too, as he follows Jiya over the war-torn Belgian fields; he had gotten used to thinking of the dark little house, and the pop of silencers, on the edge of losing his daughter.

Phantom pain. The body believes itself to be whole, and aches when it is proven wrong.

Rufus is gone. Flynn did not think there was space in his heart for one more hole, but Jiya’s wails of agony ring, unattended, through the bunker at night, like a banshee that only he can hear. Flynn lies awake at the other end of the hall, one hand clenched spiderlike in the sheets, and thinks quietly of death–hers, his daughter’s, his own.

In spite of his best efforts to force tea with honey upon the team, the cough Jiya acquires in the Belgian barn persists so strongly that one night she voluntarily vacates the room she’s taken to sharing with Lucy, setting up in one of the drafty, spare rooms at the opposite end of the bunker.

Unfortunately, this is the same end to which Flynn was banished upon his arrival, meaning that Jiya’s ringing coughs carry through the bunker’s aging vents and into what Flynn has begun to regard as his prison cell.

Tonight, with the urge to fly to her burning an urgent hole in his head, Flynn supposes idly he ought to remove himself from the situation. Take up the tiny common-room couch, perhaps, which lies empty since the bunker now contains one less living body.

 _Idly,_ of course, because walking away from his coughing teammate was never an option, and Flynn knows it. It may be that he stays as an awful sort of witness; perhaps he does so in a fit of misguided protectiveness; or maybe because Jiya _is_ the phantom pain, the echo of the lost limb. Flynn rests his head against the cool concrete wall, listens to her coughs ring through him like memory. He does not have the words.

Eventually Jiya falls silent, and Flynn is trying to focus on one of Lucy’s books, but the fact is that he still reaches out, is still _listening._ For a cough, an alarm, a murderous footstep, a silencer’s _pop,_ and for the bereaved silence that follows.

 _No_ , Flynn reminds himself. Jiya is _not_ his daughter, and her illness is not his responsibility; the instinct to protect is a selfish one, and Flynn has no right to expect anything from her. He must acclimate himself. Flynn turns another page in his book, despite having not read a word on the last one. If he can make it through tonight, he will have proved it to himself.

He will remain _right here,_ no further, not even if–

Jiya screams.

Not in the language of his daughter, but in a language that Flynn understands. “ _Daddy!_ ”

Restraint, like a taut nerve, _snaps_.

There’s a _crack_ that Flynn will realize later was the sound of him throwing his own door open, and the dark hallway flashes into motion as Flynn crosses to her room in three rapid strides. The sudden rush of cool air stuns his fevered brain, and for a moment Flynn reels, coming up short in front of Jiya’s door. He’s not entirely sure he didn’t imagine it. The fear, the _hope,_ the night–

The second scream is more like a sob, and it takes what little power he has not to break down the door.

The writhing figure in the bed is not his daughter. Somehow, that makes it easier for Flynn to fall to his knees beside her, run a gentle hand over her trembling shoulder, and whisper with a gentleness he didn’t know he still possessed, “You’re dreaming–” _Sweetheart._ “Jiya.” There’s a violent jerk under his hand, a rustle of tangled fabric, and in the pitch-black of the bunker Flynn makes out the supine figure rise.

It takes his breath away.

Jiya’s eyes flash at him in the darkness. Flynn isn’t sure she really sees him.

Until, that is, she tumbles forward in a frantic rush, wrapping her arms around him with a fragile strength and sobbing into his shoulder.

Flynn hardly notices the relief that washes over him. He’s far too occupied in cradling Jiya awkwardly in his arms, rising and bringing her with him, until he’s perched on the rail-sharp edge of her cot, Jiya half-draped over him.

“It was a _dream._ ” Flynn doesn’t shush her, but rubs gentle circles into Jiya’s back, easing the last of the sobs free. “Only a dream. Only a dream.” He repeats it, as though it could be true.

“I, I.” Jiya can’t get a word out without a cough or a gasp. “I-it’s, it scratches, I.” She draws a ragged, sobbing breath. “Sick. I think.”

“Yeah?” Flynn says softly, pulling back to cup her face in one hand. Jiya’s fists tighten in his shirt. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promises. “Here.” One big hand cups her forehead, and Jiya leans into the touch, her eyes fluttering shut.

Behind the distress, Flynn feels a gentle warmth blossom. He is still good for this.

“You _are_ hot.” With his sleeve, Flynn wipes her damp face. His words are short, but his voice is soft. “Water?”

“No…” Jiya drags herself upright by clinging to him. A second too late, Flynn remembers to catch her in his arms and help her up. He can still feel her trembling, and Flynn wonders if it’s from fear or cold. “No, just need…” A harsh sniffle catches the next . “…Know you’re okay.”

_Right._

Jiya had not called out for him; she had called for her father. For one moment Flynn is ready to shrink away from her, until he catches on to the utter cruelty of abandoning this young woman to assuage his own guilty conscience.

So instead Flynn scoots back until he’s leaning against the wall. Trembling hands paw at his pant leg, and Flynn catches one of them to calm her. Those frozen fingers squeeze hard enough to turn his knuckles deadly white.

“Hey, hey. I’m here.” Pulling her up beside him, Flynn uses one arm to tuck Jiya into his side. He only means to keep her warm, but Jiya nestles into his shoulder, whimpers softly, and buries her face there, and Flynn’s heart cracks wide open.

He pulls the thin blanket up around her, and gently lifts Jiya’s head to pull up the hood of her jacket. “Let’s keep you warm, okay?”

Had he tried to explain this moment to anyone else, Flynn would not have had the words. It would almost have sounded like he was grateful for the illness, which is far from right. But Flynn is painfully, personally aware of the thousand injuries for which he cannot provide comfort, and the simplicity of this–a nightmare, a fever, a sudden and desperate need for gentle words and soft touch–are well within his reach. It’s a gift he’s done nothing to earn.

Then Jiya coughs, footsteps patter behind him, and just like it had five years ago, the moment shatters.

Flynn turns his head with snakelike slowness to find many pairs of eyes flashing from the open doorway. There’s a shifting of bodies in the darkness, and Flynn’s hand inches to his waist to fumble for a gun that isn’t there. He’s mentally running the fatal calculations on the lethality of his unarmed body–the odds are poor, and it depends on how many guns are already trained on them, and he is moments from shoving Jiya under the bed and charging–when some distant instinct identifies Lucy’s silhouette among the crowding figures, and the tension leaks from him like the air from a balloon.

As the door silently pulls shut, Flynn looks away. They’ll all know, now.

But the thought is easy to forget when Jiya has curled into his side, her hot face buried in his chest, and has her arms around him, clinging.

Flynn cards his fingers through her damp hair, and listens to her breathe.

“ _Flynn?_ ”

Just when he thinks she’s sleeping–and therefore chewing on the heartbreaking thought that he ought to leave–Jiya says his name. Not the one with which she had summoned him, the one he was prepared to give up, but the one Flynn will always wear. The one which will keep him by her side.

An alarm whispers in the back of his head, but in this moment all Flynn knows is that Jiya’s hair is sticking to her mouth. He brushes it aside. “…Yes.”

“Good.” Jiya mumbles into his shirt. “Don’t go away.”

A silent kiss pressed to her clammy forehead in answer. With her eyes closed, Jiya lifts her head so he can reach.

There are no words for this. But Flynn’s heart reaches out, and she is there.


End file.
